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Boston Globe
20 hours ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
RFK Jr.'s made promises about vaccines. Here's what he's done as health secretary.
'I'm not going to substitute my judgment for science,' he said. Yet the Department of Health and Human Services under Kennedy has taken unprecedented steps to change how vaccines are evaluated, approved and recommended — sometimes in ways that run counter to established scientific consensus. Advertisement Here's a look at what Kennedy has said and done since becoming the nation's top health official on Feb. 13. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Kennedy and the childhood vaccine schedule Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who was unsettled about Kennedy's antivaccine work, said Kennedy pledged to him that he wouldn't change existing vaccine recommendations. 'I recommend that children follow the CDC schedule. And I will support the CDC schedule when I get in there,' Kennedy said at his Senate confirmation hearing. Kennedy also said he thought the polio vaccine was safe and effective and that he wouldn't seek to reduce its availability. Feb. 18: Kennedy vows to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases. Early March: The National Institutes of Health cancels studies about ways to improve vaccine trust and access. Advertisement April 9: Kennedy tells CBS News that 'people should get the measles vaccine, but the government should not be mandating those,' before then continuing to raise safety concerns about vaccines. May 22: Kennedy issues a report that, among other things, questioned the necessity of mandates that require children to get vaccinated for school admission and suggested that vaccines should undergo more clinical trials, including with placebos. The report has to be reissued later because the initial version cited studies that don't exist. May 30: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removes COVID-19 vaccination guidance for pregnant women and says healthy children 'may' get the shots. June 25: A group of vaccine advisers picked by Kennedy announce they are establishing a work group to evaluate the 'cumulative effect' of the children's vaccine schedule. June 25: Kennedy announces the U.S. will stop supporting the vaccines alliance Gavi. He accuses the group, along with the World Health Organization, of silencing 'dissenting views' and 'legitimate questions' about vaccine safety. Kennedy on revising CDC vaccine recommendations At the confirmation hearing, Cassidy asked Kennedy: 'Do you commit that you will revise any CDC recommendations only based on peer review, consensus based, widely accepted science?' Kennedy replied, 'Absolutely,' adding he would rely on evidence-based science. Feb. 20: HHS postpones a meeting of outside vaccine advisers. April 16: The CDC's vaccine advisory panel meets and recommends that people 50 to 59 with certain risk factors should be able to get vaccinated against respiratory syncytial virus, and endorses a new shot that protects against meningococcal bacteria. As of late June, the CDC and HHS haven't acted on the recommendations. May 27: Kennedy announces that COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women — a move immediately questioned by several public health experts. No one from the CDC, the agency that makes such recommendations, is present in the video announcing the changes. Advertisement June 9: Kennedy ousts all 17 members of the science panel that advises the CDC on how vaccines should be used. June 11: Kennedy names new vaccine policy advisers to replace the panel that he dismissed. They include a scientist who rose to prominence by relaying conspiracy theories around the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccines that followed, a leading critic of pandemic-era lockdowns, a business school professor, and a nurse affiliated with a group that is widely considered to be a leading source of vaccine misinformation. June 26: Kennedy's vaccine advisers recommend that people receive flu shots free of an ingredient that antivaccine groups have falsely tied to autism. The vote comes after a presentation from an antivaccine group's former leader. A CDC staff analysis of past research on the topic is removed from the agency's website because, according to a committee member, the report hadn't been authorized by Kennedy's office. Kennedy on vaccine approvals and review standards At the Senate hearing, Cassidy asked Kennedy if he would keep FDA's historically rigorous vaccine review standards. 'Yes,' Kennedy replied. March 29: Kennedy forces the FDA's top vaccine official to resign. The official, Peter Marks, says he feared Kennedy's team might manipulate or delete data from a vaccine safety database. May 6: Kennedy names Dr. Vinay Prasad, an outspoken critic of the FDA's handling of COVID-19 boosters, as the FDA's vaccine chief. May 16: After a delay, the FDA grants Novavax full approval for its COVID-19 vaccine but with unusual restrictions: The agency says it's for use only in adults 65 and older – or those 12 to 64 who have at least one health problem that puts them at increased risk from COVID-19. Advertisement May 20: Top officials limit the approval for seasonal COVID-19 shots to seniors and others at high risk, pending more data on everyone else. The FDA urges companies to conduct large, lengthy studies before tweaked vaccines can be approved for healthier people, a stark break from the previous federal policy recommending an annual COVID-19 shot for all Americans six months and older. May 30: FDA approves a new COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna but with the same limits on who can get it as Novavax's shot. Kennedy on bird flu vaccine At his confirmation hearing, Kennedy said he would support the development of a vaccine for H5N1 bird flu. 'I'm going to continue research on every kind of vaccine,' he said. May 28: The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, an HHS agency, cancels $766 million in awards to Moderna to develop a vaccine against potential pandemic influenza viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu.
Fast Company
a day ago
- Fast Company
This AI-powered social app aims to end loneliness—by ‘engineering chance'
'An opportunity to choose chance.' That's what social platform startup 222 claims to offer its members. It isn't a dating app—there's no swiping, and, more notably, there's no actual choosing of who you might be meeting. Instead, an AI-driven algorithm does it for you. 'We wanted people to be out and meeting each other. It was [based] on this whole idea of the death of third places, and that people aren't just running into each other anymore,' says 222 cofounder and chief operations officer Danial Hashemi. 'There's no more chance encounters, so the whole [algorithm] has always been about engineering chance.' A backyard origin story In 2021, twenty-something-year-old friends Keyan Kazemian, Arman Roshannai, and Hashemi came up with the idea for 222 as part of an independent 'research project.' They created a personality questionnaire and asked friends and strangers to complete it. Participants were grouped based on their answers, then invited to Kazemian's backyard for wine and food. Afterward, the trio would assess how well everyone got along. 'It convinced us of two things: one, it is possible to solve the social isolation problem by using machine learning and AI, and two, that even at its [initial] stage, with just us randomly assigning people, they enjoyed it so much,' Hashemi says. Social isolation isn't a new problem in our increasingly digitized lives, but it remains a persistent one. Despite access to every niche thought, community, or subreddit imaginable, society is, statistically, lonelier than ever. According to a 2023 report from the Department of Health and Human Services, we are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. Between 2003 and 2020, time spent alone increased by 24 hours per month nationwide. Over the same period, time spent engaging with others dropped by 10 hours per month. In 2018, only 16% of Americans felt connected to their communities. So, can AI truly be the cure to social isolation? Hashemi thinks it can—through 222, which he believes can 'deepen relationships' and 'connect people' to their cities. How it works The name 222 comes from the street address in Los Angeles where the idea was first developed. The platform is accessible via both app and website. There are no profile photo uploads, and the experience begins with what feels like the final boss of personality quizzes. With prompts ranging from favorite movies to political views to 'how likely would you be to do cocaine?', the algorithm gathers input through a labyrinth of questions. These span categories like identity, interests, and media, shaping each user's 'curation profile.' Eventually, users receive curated invite cards to activities like 'dinner and a comedy club' or 'pickleball and lunch,' matched to their algorithmic personality type. To accept—and to help fund the app alongside its investor backing—users can pay a per-event curation fee of $22.22, subscribe monthly for the same price, or choose a discounted three-month or annual plan. 'We're not trying to be some novel experience that someone tries one time and then doesn't come back,' Hashemi says. 'We're trying to build the lasting product that people build their social infrastructure on top of.' After each group event, users can give feedback on whether they'd like to hang out or date specific individuals. This helps fine-tune the algorithm and increases the 'retainment factor,' according to Hashemi—either deepening existing connections or making space for new ones. 'It just feels like we're more divided than ever and there's more echo chambers than ever,' Hashemi says. 'All of these social media platforms are only showing you what you love and aren't challenging you.' Originally launched in L.A., 222 has since expanded to New York City, San Francisco, and most recently, Chicago. To date, 222 has raised $3.6 million in seed and angel investments from the likes of General Catalyst, Y Combinator, Upfront Ventures, and the 1517 Fund. On July 2, the platform will become available internationally for the first time, launching in Toronto, with London and D.C. to follow later in the month.
UPI
a day ago
- Politics
- UPI
HHS investigates trans athlete on Minn. high school softball team
The Department of Health and Human Services has opened an investigation into Minnesota after a transgender teenager played on a girls' high school softball team. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo June 27 (UPI) -- The Department of Health and Human Services has opened a civil rights investigation into the Minnesota Department of Education over a transgender teenager competing on a girls' softball team. The investigation, announced Thursday, is the latest from the Trump administration connected to the teenager from Champlin Park High School competing in the girls' Minnesota State High School League. The team earlier this month won the 2025 State Tournament. HHS said in a statement Thursday that it is investigating the Minnesota Department of Education and the MSHSL under Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education programs and activities of HHS funding recipients. It is seeking see if the state's policies violated federal civil rights laws. "The investigation will examine whether Minnesota engaged in discrimination on the basis of sex by allowing male athletes to compete on sports teams reserved for females," the statement said. The federal Department of Justice and the Department of Education have already opened investigations related to the transgender teenager's participation in the sports league. The effort to ban transgender girls from girls' sports teams has been a Republican effort for years and part of a larger movement targeting the LGBT community, which gained a federal partner under the Trump administration. In early February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports to ensure transgender women and girls do not play on women or women's or girls' sports sports teams. Proponents of the ban argue that allowing transgender females in girls' and women's sports gives them an unfair advantage while being discriminatory to athletes who were born female. Critics, meanwhile, contend that the science does not support claims that transgender girls have an unfair advantage, that this is a non-issue given how few transgender athletes there are and that transgender athletes have the right to compete alongside their peers. The American Academy of Pediatrics has also voiced support for transgender athletes participating in sports competitions that align with their gender identity, stating it "helps youth develop self-esteem, correlates positively with overall mental health, and appears to have a protective effect against suicide.
New York Post
2 days ago
- Health
- New York Post
Standing up to bullying, unscientific transgender activist mob
Almost no one does wicked things in the knowledge that what they are doing is wicked. It is a truth that should be universally acknowledged that in order to do something truly evil, a person needs to believe that what they are doing is good. Until somebody steps in and says 'no.' This week there was an extraordinary development in one of the great medical and social scandals of our time. Advertisement Alex Byrne is a professor of philosophy at MIT. This week he outed himself as one of the authors of the review published last month by the Department of Health and Human Services. Or rather he outed himself after being hounded and exposed by demonic maniacs online. The review goes over treatments of so-called 'gender dysphoria' in minors. Advertisement The fact that the authors of the DHHS review even tried to remain anonymous tells us a lot about the toxicity of this whole debate. The review itself is considerate and moderate. It weighs up the actual evidence and simply suggests that American authorities should align with the emerging consensus among experts and politicians in Europe. Which is that things have been done in the name of treating 'gender dysphoria' are a medical and ethical nightmare. For over a decade now, the 'be kind' brigade has been insisting that 'trans' should be the next civil rights issue of our age. No less a graveyard of thought than Time magazine had a cover in 2014 saying that transgender issues should be 'America's next civil rights frontier.' Advertisement That is a very loaded way to present a complex issue. After all, talk about 'civil rights' brings two particular struggles to mind. The first is the struggle to ensure that ethnic minorities — in particular African-Americans — have equal rights to everyone else in the United States. That issue was addressed and answered by force of moral argument six decades ago. The second issue that it brings up is the fight for gay rights, which also started some six decades ago. Since that time, the moral argument of the gay rights movement has also been accepted. Advertisement Nobody today wants to be a bigot who removes rights from black Americans or gay people. But by presenting the complex issue of trans as the inevitable next step in a campaign for ever more rights, our societies in the West took a mad turn. After all, the acceptance of other arguments were based on the idea that the people getting their rights were equals — and that society would not need to change itself or alter its fundamentals in order to grant these rights. The moral force of both movements were founded on the basis of 'Just like us.' And that is how they succeeded. The 'trans-rights' movement, by contrast, turned everything completely on its heads. They insisted not just that some people feel that they have been born in the wrong body, but that nobody is born with any discernible biological sex. Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters They insisted that because some people feel a confusion about their sexual identity nobody has a fixed biological identity. That — as some of us said from the start — was madness. It would be like the gay rights movement saying 'We're here, we're queer — and as a result there is no difference between men and women.' I doubt the gay rights cause would have succeeded if that was the track that campaigners chose. Advertisement But that was where the trans movement went. And of course the landmine which they trod on — and which was gone along with for far too long — was the explosive issue of children. As the DHHS review notes, the whole idea of 'gender affirming care' (note how manipulative that phrase is) was based on unbelievably weak evidence. Even before you get to issues of life-changing surgery, there was the imposition of 'puberty blockers.' These could be handed out after minimal consultation to any child who simply felt concern about the onset of puberty and worried about the changes to their body. They were handed out with no long-term studies of their effects. Advertisement Too few professionals warned that these medications could cause lifelong sexual disfunction, infertility and much more. The ones that did raise alarms or even questions were hounded by the dementors of our age — both online and off. But how did anyone think a child could make an informed decision about such a measure? Studies from Sweden, the Netherlands, Britain and other countries have confirmed what many of us said, which is that young people — including those who might grow up to just be gay — would be 'trans-ed' by the health industry. And live to deeply regret it. 'Gay conversion therapy' may have become a taboo. But converting gay people into approximations of the opposite sex became deemed 'progressive.' Advertisement We were told that if a child who had 'gender dysphoria' was not medicated with cross-sex hormones, or did not have a double-mastectomy then a range of things would happen. We were told that 'trans children' (another fallacious category) would 'kill themselves.' Or that any criticism of such procedures was 'disappearing' or even 'genociding' trans people. I have lost count of the number of American parents I have spoken to who were told by doctors that they had to 'trans' their child and were given the slogan if, say, the child was a biological male, 'Would you rather have a trans daughter or a dead son?' Parents were literally bulldozed into agreeing to life-altering surgeries and medical experiments being run on their children. Advertisement Now a smidgen of sanity has been brought to the debate. Future generations will look back at this period and marvel at what we allowed. They will coo with amazement that we gave life-altering drugs and performed life-altering operations on young people not old enough to vote, drive or drink alcohol. But we can already tell why it happened. It happened because pseudo-science was waved by crazed progressives bullies, who in the name of 'kindness' did things that were wicked beyond words.
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
Eric Green was the first institute director forced out of NIH. He still hasn't been told why.
Advertisement 'I do believe there were people put into the department by the White House before Kennedy arrived. I think they had their agenda for who was going to get terminated, and why and how.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Green, who spent about three decades at NIH, reflected on his experience as a precursor of the thousands of layoffs that roiled the agency in the weeks since. He insisted he had been ready and willing to work with the new leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services — though he lambasted many of the suite of changes and proposals made by the current administration. The administration used something of a bureaucratic technicality to remove Green from his position. Institute and center directors are appointed to five-year terms, which are tied to external reviews from the scientific community. But they can serve multiple terms, and no director had failed to be renewed. Advertisement The paperwork and reviews for Green to be renewed were submitted by the Biden administration in December 2024, with the expectation he would be granted another term beginning March 17. His appointment was the first to be up for renewal since Trump was inaugurated. 'I drew the short straw,' Green said. Just three days before he was supposed to begin his new term, Green asked about the renewal, and he said it quickly became clear there was no plan to keep him. 'I was in what turned out to be a very dramatic week of back and forth and attempts to save me,' he said. Memoli seemingly agreed to keep Green on as a senior adviser, and he said at least one member of Congress campaigned to keep him in his post. He declined to name that lawmaker. Ultimately 'they just chose not to reappoint me, and it was basically a convenient way to decapitate a leader at NIH. I was never told why,' Green said. In the early days of the administration, he was one of several dozen employees at the federal health agencies to be placed on a ' Green had been a vocal advocate for promoting diversity in genomic datasets as well as the research workforce. He said the issue was important for the veracity of the science coming out of his institute, and for geneticists' ability to connect with a diverse population. But, ultimately it was simply part of his duty, given the emphasis the Biden administration put on the issue. Advertisement In his career, Green served a mix of Democratic and Republican presidents — Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. 'As a public servant, you adapt. You have to sort of lean left, you lean right. So, Biden really pushed DEI, and it was a required element in my performance plan. So I did my job,' he said. Just as he had shifted NHGRI's priorities under the Biden administration, he had already begun the process of reorienting the institute's work toward chronic disease, a focus of Kennedy's. 'That's the tragic thing,' he said. 'We were all poised to align, because that's what we do as dedicated federal workers.' Green feels a special onus to prioritize work that centers on diverse populations given genetics' fraught history with the eugenics movement, which promoted the idea that preferable genetic traits should be encouraged, and other traits should be eliminated through measures like forced sterilization or genocide. Green sees 'tinges' of the eugenics movement in the recent backlash against diversity initiatives. 'I think it's evil,' he said of the administration's vilification of diversity initiatives. While he said there is room for reasonable discussion around the best ways to promote equity, 'I think underpinning a lot of this by some people, is just overt racism and prejudices.' Serving as 'consoler in chief' In the wake of his termination, Green continued going to the NIH campus in Bethesda for several weeks, helping his former staff navigate the uncharted waters it was in. While he was no longer being paid, Green felt as if he had been forced to 'orphan' his staff. His deputy director, Vence Bonham, was made acting director — only to be Advertisement Green was at NIH on April 1, when sweeping layoffs hit the entirety of the Department of Health and Human Services. 'I was there as the consoler in chief on April 1, when all hell broke loose,' he said. 'They took out all of my communications people, all of my education people, all my policy people, all my workforce development people, which were all my staff that have offices surrounding my suite. It's like all my immediate, daily family just got decimated.' In the two months since, the administration has begun making numerous changes to the NIH, from the way external research is paid for to how it will fund foreign-based scientists collaborating with US researchers. While he believes there are ways the agency can be improved, Green took issue with some of the changes. He called proposed revisions to research funding for overhead costs, called indirect costs, that would mean slashing payments to many leading universities, 'stupid and naive.' The current system is far from perfect but, 'we should optimize it. We shouldn't weaponize it,' he said. 'Let's get smart people in a room, including from business and from economics and from government and policy. Let's think about what is the right partnership between the federal government and the academic biomedical ecosystem.' He added that funding decisions are being made by people who don't seem to appreciate the implications of the cuts on biomedical research. 'It's all political, and it's punitive, and they're not engaging the experts to know what the implications of how you're harming the ecosystem are.' Advertisement The administration has also floated a 40 percent cut to funding for the NIH along with a massive reduction in the number of institutes it has. Green is hopeful Congress won't go along with such a drastic reduction, but if it were to come to pass, he said 'it'll be decades before we recover. I think other countries will surpass us quickly. I think it'll be catastrophic.' A more pressing concern, he said, is the administration's centralization of grant reviews. In the past, the NIH has employed reviewers at each of its institutes alongside a centralized staff at the Center for Scientific Review. While the latter typically approves more grants, Green worries its staff will not see the promise in innovative research. 'You think you're stamping out waste, fraud, and abuse,' he said. 'You're also stamping out innovation and creativity and the cutting edge.' Green is looking for his next gig. He hopes to return to academia, to mentor and teach students. He said he is excited about teaching students who may not be geneticists. But, he's also on standby to help rebuild the NIH. He said he is not sure who would take up the mantle of NHGRI director at such a tumultuous time. 'The current state of the NIH is unsustainable, because there's too much functionality that's been destroyed and lost. So many of us will be [at the] ready to help, advise, or do whatever, rebuild it brick by brick,' he said. 'People keep asking me 'How long will it take to rebuild?' I don't know the answer. I don't know how much more damage is going to be done.' Advertisement
